Moving from UserVoice

The UserVoice import tool allows you to import your entire ticket history (including customer profiles) as well as your knowledge base articles from UserVoice to Help Scout. Your UserVoice data will remain untouched! Help Scout will only import a copy of each ticket and customer profile.

In this article

Things you should know

Here are a couple of key points to remember before flipping the switch on the import tool:

You'll likely use the same support email address as you do in UserVoice. For example, messages sent to support@domain.com will no longer be forwarded to support@yourdomain.uservoice.com, but rather to your unique Help Scout mailbox alias that looks something like this: support.1.708e2d1e61ff6040@helpscout.net.

Help Scout does not have a ticketing web portal. This is more of a transition for your customers, but be prepared to direct them to your dedicated support address. Since Help Scout is entirely email based, you'll be providing top-notch email support going forward. You can always connect a custom contact form if another ticket channel is needed.

All tickets import in as Closed conversations in Help Scout, regardless of Status The UserVoice CSV import does not take current ticket Status in account, so all of your conversations will come in as Closed in Help Scout.

UserVoice tags will be imported to Help Scout. You'll see the same tags on the same tickets, of course. You can clean up or merge tags after the import if needed.

Help Scout does not support the "type" field or other custom ticket fields. Tickets with custom fields will be imported, but field values will not be applied or referenced anywhere in Help Scout.

Your old ticket numbers will not follow you to Help Scout When we import a ticket, we create a ticket line item that reads something like this: "Conversation imported from UserVoice ticket #542983." In this message, the number referenced is the ticket id (column 3 on the CSV) and not the ticket number (column 4).

The import process may take time to finish. You're looking at roughly one hour per 1,000 tickets, so large accounts can take a few days or more. However, your tickets are imported newest to oldest, so within a couple of hours you'll have the most recent data.

Pre-import check list

Help Scout

UserVoice

Disable ticket channels as you see fit. For example, turn off the HipChat, Flowdock, and Facebook integrations so that new requests are no longer funneled into UserVoice, and that updates are no longer sent out to those services.

Sort through your Canned Responses and Ticket Rules. Canned responses will need to be manually copied to Help Scout as Saved Replies. Ticket Rules will need to be re-created as Workflows.

External

Make sure you're able to log in to your email provider's control panel. You should know where your mail forwarding options are located, and how to create or change forwarding rules. For provider specific instructions, check out these helpful articles.

If you're using third-party integrations with UserVoice, such as Olark or SnapEngage, be prepared to change external integration settings after you've made the move to Help Scout. You can always install Help Scout integrations at a later time.

Make coffee.

Starting the import

1

Log in to UserVoice and head over to
Settings →
General. Scroll down the page and look for
Export data section. Select
All time from the menu, then click the
Export button. UserVoice will email you a list of CSV and XLSX files to pick from.

2

From your email inbox, download the
ticket_history and
knowledgebase_articles CSV files. Both of these CSV files need to be hosted publicly somewhere, such as Dropbox or your own web server. Once they're hosted, copy the public link to each file to the clipboard and head back to Help Scout.

3

In Help Scout, navigate to
Manage →
Company →
Import data and select UserVoice from the list. Drop in the URLs to your two CSV files, add an optional import tag, and select which mailbox and Docs site to import to. Click on the blue
Begin Import button when you're ready.

4

Remember, if you're importing a bunch of tickets, the import process could be lengthy. Once you've started the import, you can close the page and get back to
reddit work. We'll email you when the import has finished.

Common questions

When should I update my forwarding rule to send mail to Help Scout? We'd recommend changing your forwarding rule after the import has finished. If you're feeling adventurous, you can change it before starting the import tool, and then work out of Help Scout going forward.

How do I know which tickets were imported? Imported tickets contain a tiny bit of text that looks something like this: Conversation imported from UserVoice ticket #723.